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Brokers said the vessels are the 1999-built SK Summit and the 2000-built SK Supreme, SK Splendor, and SK Stellar.
The LNG carriers were sold on “as is” basis for delivery in Singapore.
The price is said to be about $14 million per vessel, or about $469 per ldt.
LNG Prime invited SK Shipping to comment on the matter.
According to SK Shipping’s website, these LNG carriers were built to serve South Korean LNG importer Kogas under long-term charter deals.
The 138,200-cbm SK Supreme, SK Splendor, and SK Stellar were built by Samsung Heavy and they feature GTT’s Mark III containment tech, while the 138,000-cbm SK Summit features GTT’s NO96 tech.
About 200 steam LNG carriers
Flex LNG CEO Øystein Kalleklev recently said that there are about 200 steam LNG carriers in the market.
He noted that spot LNG “rates are softening, and they are down to very low levels, levels we have never really seen in the fourth quarter before” mainly due to the number of ships for delivery.
“This means high fuel tonnage is at $10,000 and all the steamships are basically being priced out of the market,” Kalleklev said.
According to Kalleklev, the LNG carrier fleet includes “21 quite modern steamships.”
“These are a bit more modern steam in terms of efficiency, but they all have the disadvantage of having a very inefficient propulsion system,” he said.
“Why are they still in the market? Because a lot of these steamships were fixed on 20, 25-year charters, and they are rolling off these charters in the coming years, with about 75 of these ships being returned from long-term charters in the next 24 months,” he said.
“What we expect will happen here is a mass EEXI-tinction. So EEXI means Energy Efficiency for Existing Ships Index, which is part of the IMO rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the shipping sector,” he said.
Kalleklev said these ships are now “technically and commercially obsolete, and we do think scrapping activity will take up, and which we do think will rebalance the market in 2027.”
He said that historically, there has been very limited scrapping demand.
“But as mentioned with all these steamships coming off charters, in this kind of market balance we assume 53 of the 75 ships to be removed from the market,” he said.
“This could be more if the market stays soft. It’s very expensive to take a steamship through a 25-year special survey,” he said.
